April 7, 2017, US military strike hits airbase in Syria after gas attack in Idlib appears to have changed president’s view on Bashar al-Assad

Homs governor: deaths reported at airbase

Associated Press cites Talal Barazi, governor of Homs province, where al-Shayrat airbase is located, saying there have been deaths as a result of the strikes.

Julian Borger

Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the Russians were informed in “multiple conversations” on Thursday, through the “deconfliction channel” – a communications channel to the Russian base at Latakia used to avoid collisions or exchanges of fire between US and allied planes and Russian planes.

“There are Russians at the base and we took extraordinary precautions to not target the area where the Russians are,” he said.

AP reports that the Syrian Coalition, an opposition group, has welcomed the US attack, saying it puts an end to an age of “impunity” and should be just the beginning.

Major Jamil al-Saleh, a US-backed rebel commander whose Hama district was struck by a suspected chemical weapons attack, said he hoped the US attack on a government air base would be a “turning point” in the six-year war.

Talal Barazi, governor of Syria’s Homs province, where al-Shayrat airbase is located, has told state TV that such strikes serve the purpose of terrorists, Reuters reports:

Syrian leadership and Syrian policy will not change. This targeting was not the first and I don’t believe it will be the last …

The armed terrorist groups and Daesh [Isis] failed to target the Syrian Arab Army and Russian military positions.

The US strikes “targeted military positions in Syria and in Homs specifically” in order to “serve the goals of terrorism in Syria and the goals of Israel in the long run”, Barazi said. (The Syrian government describes all armed groups opposed to it as terrorists.)

Barazi said there are not thought to be “big human casualties” at the airbase, though there is material damage as a result of the strikes. He said firefighting and rescue operations had been continuing for more than two hours.